The popularity of backyard swimming pools has sparked the development of recreational devices for use and enjoyment in such pools. One area of considerable development is in floating lounges which permit the swimming pool enthusiast to enjoy the cooling effects of the water without need for the exertion required to stay afloat. Traditional ground based lounge chair ergonomics do not translate well to the aquatic environment. The awkwardness created by the water's buoyant effects makes lounge stability a particularly challenging design problem.
Previous designs for reclining chairs and infant seats provide background for the problems faced by the floating lounge designer. U.S. Pat. No. 3,074,759 to Bergenwall describes a reclining lounge chair. The angle of recline is adjusted by the use of a pivotal lever which cooperates with a toothed rack to move the seat relative to the support frame. U.S. Pat. No. 3,142,512 to Hamilton et al. claims an infant seat whose two sections are pivotally joined to permit rotation about a common axis. Several embodiments are disclosed. In one, corrugated bracket members are fastened to the underside of the seat. A cross member is received within the corrugated bracket and held in place by a leaf spring. Manually applied lifting pressure against the leaf spring permits adjustment of the seat relative to the cross member. This movement translates into angle adjustment as the two sections rotate about a common axis.
The mechanisms disclosed in the prior art exhibit the same shortcoming when the difficulty of recline angle is faced in the aquatic environment. Both mechanisms require the manual application of force to cause movement of the seat relative to its support framework. While the difficulty presented by this requirement for land based lounges is minimal, major problems are encountered in aquatic use. Manual operations in hard to reach locations cause lounge instability which may cause the pool enthusiast to be unwittingly dumped into the water. The buoyancy of the floating lounge support also presents characteristic responses vastly different from the support structures of land based lounges. The present invention provides an improved floating lounge which does not require manual input and is thereby inherently more stable.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a floating lounge which is stable in normal use.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a lounging angle adjustment mechanism which does not require manually applied lifting force.
It is yet another objective of this invention to provide a reclining lounge particularly suitable for aquatic use.
It is a still further object of this invention to provide an adjustable, reclining mechanism which is easy to use.